Acapulco, the bilingual Apple TV+ comedy in regards to the workers at a high-end Mexican resort, reaches the top of its wildly uneven second season this week. Maximo and Hugo make it to the previous’s childhood house. Nora and Esteban are getting married. Julia and Maximo want to select in regards to the future. Memo will get what he needs in life. And Diane will get her resort again so as.

Certainly, everybody will get precisely what they need. What a really, very pat ending for a present that promised to deal with extra real-life points.

Acapulco recap: ‘Towards All Odds’

Season 2, episode 10: Within the season 2 finale, entitled “Towards All Odds,” Maximo Gallardo (performed by Eugenio Derbez), Hugo (Raphael Alejandro) and Joe (Will Sasso) have lastly made it again to Maximo’s house after a season’s price of touring and reminiscing. Prior to now, Maximo (Enrique Arrizon) and Sara (Regina Reynoso) should begin planning their mom Nora’s (Vanessa Bauche) wedding ceremony to Esteban (Carlos Corona). Nora swears she doesn’t need a big-deal wedding ceremony, however Esteban lets it slip that he does.

Maximo has preparations of his personal to make. He approaches Don Pablo (Damián Alcázar) to see about getting his outdated job at Las Colinas again. The difficulty could be convincing Diane (Jessica Collins) that he’s not vulnerable to corruption from the likes of Fabián (Bayardo De Murguia) anymore. So he presents Diane with an thought: Collaborate along with his journal to craft their very own gossip tales, with the participation of the resort’s well-known visitors. No extra hiding within the bushes searching for grime. Everybody’s on the identical web page.

That’s a rousing success, and Maximo is promoted to Don Pablo’s assistant. Memo (Fernando Carsa) is made head pool boy. And the entire of Las Colinas exhibits as much as make Nora’s wedding ceremony particular. It’s all very heartwarming.

Chad (Chord Overstreet) leaves, and Memo will get his girlfriend again. Then Julia (Camila Perez), after getting permission from Isabelle (Gabriella Milla), comes again and tells Maximo she needs to be with him. Don’t you like when a present’s each single drawback is solved in half an hour? After which, simply earlier than the credit roll, we be taught that the lady Maximo has been touring towards all season with Hugo and Joe in tow just isn’t considered one of his misplaced loves, however his estranged daughter. What a twist!

A lot for straightforward laughs

After flirting for a half-second with one thing extra thorny and culturally related this season, Acapulco retreated to anodyne, sitcom premises and simple laughs. I ought to have recognized this present was not outfitted to deal with the luggage of its plot involving Sara and Roberta. Nor with the bone-deep bigotry that comes with too lots of the main religions, and the way these religions rule life in rural communities greater than anything.

A present in regards to the competing religions of Catholicism and capitalism would have been fairly an attention-grabbing one, particularly one like Acapulco, which is dedicated to a candy-colored aesthetic and a frothy musical tone. Alas, this present will all the time simply be a Eugenio Derbez comedy. And nothing in his world of inoffensive excessive jinks can’t be solved with a mild speaking to, a hug and a simple joke.

Don’t get me fallacious. I’ve no drawback (in concept) with gentle comedy — the world wants it! However don’t tiptoe as much as the road of one thing darker and heavier, solely to pirouette again from it with all of your would possibly. It’s like being held up, just for the gun to launch a flag with the phrase “bang” on it.

Acapulco may have been a lot extra

This season’s reversion is offensive as a result of Acapulco promised greater than it had any intention of delivering, only for the sake of seeming like one thing extra attention-grabbing and within the plight of the marginalized. I let down my guard to see the place this present may go, given the directive to attempt to be one thing greater than the weightless comedy of manners it was in its first season (with the daintiest seasoning of sophistication battle off to the facet). And I used to be duly rewarded for doing so with extra of the identical nonsense.

If I’ve an issue with Derbez, it’s the identical drawback I’ve with somebody like Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi, who makes content material that guarantees to essentially blow the lid off of oppressive, colonialist concepts, and as an alternative fingers within the laziest doable model of a corporatized product — an SUV with rainbow flags hung from the rearview mirror.

Giving cash to creators who wouldn’t in any other case be allowed to do their dream jobs is fantastic and an necessary step for the U.S. leisure trade. However when push involves shove, Derbez doesn’t really care in regards to the points in his exhibits. If he did, he’d be trustworthy in regards to the trauma his characters face, not trace at it after which soft-pedal each hardship and wrap it up with a smile.

Acapulco is a sometimes-charming sitcom with delusions of grandeur. It’s going to by no means be the present it may very well be, not as long as this patently false, feel-good angle persists. I’ve little doubt it’ll get a 3rd season on Apple TV+. I simply hope somebody on the present’s writing workers learns one thing within the meantime.

★★☆☆☆

Watch Acapulco on Apple TV+

Now you can watch the primary two seasons of Acapulco on Apple TV+.

Rated: TV-14

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay collection The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Overview of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the writer of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which could be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.